20 Random Facts About Zacharias E Smith
by Thanfiction
Summary: Never underestimate the loyalty of a Hufflepuff. Daydverse, part of the 20 Random Facts series, spoilers for the entire 'verse.


**1. He is a direct descendant of Helga Hufflepuff.**

Or at least, that's the family legend. In truth, no one is a thousand percent sure if she was a real person and if so whom, but the scholars have some pretty good guesses, and the Smiths line up with most of them. His Great-Aunt Hepzibah even had a cup that had been in the family for centuries that was generally accepted to have belonged to the Founder, though it disappeared (along with more than a few other valuable antiques from her collection) after she died, some twenty-odd years before Zach was even born. True or not, it's undeniable that the Smiths have, to say the least, trended Hufflepuff for long enough and consistently enough that school things are just bought in yellow and black as a matter of rote. Brian once asked what he'd do if one of his kids wound up sorted Slytherin, and it took almost an hour to convince the proud former serpent that it wasn't anything against their House when his whipwand answer had been "get a paternity test."

**2. His father is the exact middle child of seven. His mother is one of five. **

Large families have just been something he always took for granted, despite having only two sisters himself. It just feels right to him that a proper holiday gathering should mean renting a hall, that coat hooks get numbered and bread gets baked in batches, not individual loaves. Other people always assume it must either be utter chaos or military regimentation, but to him, the balance of intense organization and systems for everything with the vibrantly random ebb and flow of so many people and personalities is the most comforting environment he can imagine. When he conjures his Patronus, it's to the memory of Christmas when he was ten years old, the confetti of a hundred people pulling poppers at the stroke of midnight exploding into sparks and flowers, birds and butterflies and tiny dragons made of magical fire that swooped around your head and then burst. When family means a small village, home is a thing you can wrap against the coldest night.

3. **He is very good with rhymes and poetry.**

For the most part, Zach knew that he would never be one of the school's intellectual powerhouses, but when it came to anything with a rhyme and a meter, his memory has always been remarkable. When he was three years old, his parents briefly thought he had learned to read because he could recite so many of his children's books, and he's always been able to remember even complicated song lyrics on at most the second hearing, even if he can't _sing _for shit. Justin introduced him to Byron and Shelley, Tennyson and Blake, and he uses recitation of Pope's _Illiad _for hours on end to keep himself awake on long stake-outs. It's a quirk he's even jury-rigged to remember household tasks, where he puts things, and his own children's names. _Two gallons of milk and yeast for the bread, three pounds of mince and for cabbage, two heads…_

4. **He was next door neighbors with Susan when they were little.**

He doesn't remember much about the time they lived in Portsmouth, especially since they moved to the Midlands when he was only five, but he did remember the girl. More than remember, he was terrified of her and would hide behind his mothers' skirts any time their paths crossed, because he was completely convinced that this tiny, delicate, exquisitely dressed creature wasn't actually real and he hated, hated, hated, _hated _anything resembling living dolls. Even as an adult, there is a strict ban on any of his children having dolls that _do things. _He has never confessed this to her, and he often wonders if she even knows they were briefly neighbors or has any memory of the skittery weird boy next door.

5. **He is the oldest member of the DA. **

He was born at 12:03am, 2 September, 1979. This put him exactly three minutes past the cut-off line for Hogwarts, and his parents decided not to argue it; better he have nearly a year's advantage on his classmates than always be the baby. In retrospect, he's deeply embarrassed by what a big deal it was, particularly in sixth year where for almost two months until Ernie had his birthday, he was the only "adult" in their tight-knit little clan of house and year. It's even more deeply embarrassing to think what he thought "adult" meant back then. On the good side, it did make him extremely aware of trying to be responsible and set a good example. On the less good side, he thinks he was probably kind of a dick on a regular basis, usually in direct proportion to how desperately he was trying to fake having a clue what he was doing.

6. **He and Meg have been together more or less since second year.**

It was the time of year when the fifth-years had their traditional OWL-related career panic, and the second-years had all been sitting around safely out of the way discussing what they wanted their own futures to look like. Or rather, Justin and Ernie and Hannah were gushing on about their fabulous and annoyingly inevitable lives and some of the rest of them were chiming in here and there, but when Meg said that she wanted to be a Mummy with a big family, she accidentally set something off among the witches. Hannah insisted that she needed a real plan, Susan started on that she didn't have to give up girly things to have a proper career, Sally-Anne was baffled why anyone would _want_that, and Morag just flat out called her a bidyin slut who wanted to use some poor bastard to fill her Monday book. She ran off crying, and he chased her down and did his best to comfort her, confessing that he'd wanted a big family too for as long as he could remember and wasn't the whole point of dreams that they were _whatever_ you wanted? They were friends after that, and when the line kind of blurred from friends to special friends to dating to _together, _they never were quite sure.

7. **He was panicking at the end of sixth year that he didn't have a career track.**

It wasn't laziness or a lack of ambition. He had just never been much of one for questioning the system if the system was working, and he had grown up with the assumption that he would get good marks, graduate, go to the ministry, take a few placement tests, and be given a suitable career that he'd follow until retirement, just because _that's what you did. _But then Riddle was back and Ministers were dropping like flies and nothing was working the way it was supposed to at all and he was still being expected to grow up and do…something. Between that and his guilt over how things turned out with the DA, he had never said yes to anything in his life as fast as he did when Shacklebolt offered him a position with the Aurors.

8. **He is missing four teeth and several toenails have never grown back. **

The Carrows didn't miss that he was the only of-age student outside of Slytherin who didn't disappear. Snape knew that the DA had been using a Fidelius, and while there was debate as to whether he was the Secret-Keeper, they did assume that he was the contact on the outside enabling the others to be fed and kept informed wherever they had gone. Ironically, the Fidelius_wasn't _staying his tongue any longer, but Colin had been wrong. He hadn't been leaving out of cowardice, but in hope of protecting them, and it was that he clung to when the questions went on for hour after hour, when they wouldn't let him sleep, when the Cruciatus got boring and they got creative. Ernie and Susan dancing at their wedding, Morag screaming Glaswegian obscenities in triumph at the Ravenclaw Keeper after a game-winning goal, Derek standing like a bulwark between Alecto and a trembling first-year, Justin's flawlessly cultured midnight explanations of all the dirty bits in Shakespeare, Meg and her scrapbook…they were his family, and Snape and his dogs would never understand what family meant to a Smith.

9. **He personally recruited 88 reinforcements. **

He wasn't very good on a broom, and they were too slow anyway. He Apparated, even though he hadn't had his license a year yet and took a half-dozen minor splinchings throughout the night as he grew more exhausted magically. As he went from house to house pleading his case, he punched more than one wall in helpless frustration at _why, _if they believed him, those daft bastards were taking so long to get ready and come with him. Years later he realized that it wasn't that they didn't believe, it was that they absolutely believed. They looked into the panicked, aching eyes of that bloodied, pleading youth and knew that if they followed him into hell, they might not come back, and it takes more than a minute or two to get ready to go die, especially if you have children to consider.

10. **He was married at wandpoint. **

He and Meg had planned to remain abstinent until marriage, and though they had kind of stretched that definition, he was absolutely certain they were both still virgins in the way that counted at the point he left the DA and they kind of broke up/she stopped talking to him. When she showed up at his house three months after the battle with a furious father and a very definite pregnancy, he knew he couldn't possibly be responsible, she was swearing he must have raped her and erased her memory, and it was a furiously betrayed young couple who were dragged to the courthouse by their respective parents. He slept on the couch and researched how to get an annulment and how quickly he could prove the baby wasn't his until a week before their son was born, when Hermione – completely fed up with both of them – pointed out that you could be as technically virginal as you wanted, but if she'd gotten him off like_that _and then touched herself up _there _with his cum still all over her hands, biology said that totally counted. The results of that revelation will never be rivaled as the most awkward conversation of his life.

11. **He missed the birth of his first child.**

She still hadn't spoken to him, but he came with anyway when she went into labor. Thanks to Hermione, he was pretty sure it was his after all, but to call Meg stubborn was like calling a Hungarian Horntail temperamental. She held Sally-Anne's hand and pretended he wasn't even there, but right after she had transitioned to active labor and the baby was _coming, _Shacklebolt's patronus came with a summons. There was a lead on Amycus, and with Justin, Ron, and Harry not there that year and Tony still in hospital, Zach and Neville were the only two who had dealt with him before. Even still, he almost refused to go, but for the first time in almost nine months, Meg made eye contact, dropping her friend's hand and reaching for his as she told him to go get the bastard. It turned out to be a false lead, which may have had a lot to do with why when they _did _eventually get their hands on him, Zach almost got himself in jail right alongside for the level of…er…physical vigor involved. For some reason, Shacklebolt couldn't remember any approved techniques for restraint or interrogation that involved that kind of amateur dentistry.

12. **He is the strongest member of the Auror Department. **

It was something he discovered during the DA (though he could have done without getting screamed at by Bagman): he really liked working out. It was all the good kinds of difficult, with predictable, measurable results and steady rhythms and a system that made sense. He used the gym at the Ministry because he knew heavy weight-training equipment and small children were a bad combination, and the hour and a half every other day was a hobby and a way to relax that only incidentally kept him in fantastic shape. Some of the other regulars have tried to start up conversations, assuming that he shares their interest in more clearly shredded abs or bigger biceps or is training for something, but he couldn't care less about supplements or the latest fad diet or extreme sport. He eats what he wants, sticks to the same routines that have always served him well, and that he can easily toss a stocky six year old three feet in the air as if she weighs nothing and snapped pipes off their fittings like twigs to arm the DA when they were once trapped in an unexpected firefight outside a warehouse…those are fringe benefits.

13. **He would still be ok with more kids. **

Nine is good. Nine is plenty. They're not necessarily trying for more, contrary to the constant teasing that they ought go for a good round dozen. But at the same time, as long as Meg's health remains this good and their family isn't struggling, neither of them see any particular reason to start using birth control. He's not ashamed to admit that there are a lot of things about his wife when she's pregnant that are downright fetish material for him, and there is nothing on earth more beautiful and perfect to him than the feeling of a young baby in his arms, but it is also a matter so obvious in their household that it's never even been discussed that the number of children they wind up with really is, in the end, entirely Meg's decision. If she told him they were proper done, he'd not breathe a word of argument, nor would he regret or resent it at all….but he's quite glad she hasn't.

14. **He has a secret motorcycle.**

Harry didn't want it for emotional reasons, but he also didn't want to see it auctioned off, and Granger had made it clear that the gleam in Ron's eyes was going to stay exactly that if he ever wanted to see the inside of their bedroom again. Zach wasn't sure what the hell possessed him, he'd never had any particular love of Muggle things, but something made him offer and one galleon, three sickles later, he was the owner of a black Triumph Bonneville with a snarling hound custom-worked into the chrome. He still hasn't learned to ride it, he still hasn't told his wife he has it, it's still actually down in the basement of Grimmauld Place, but it's his and sometimes he goes and cleans it and fusses over it and swears he'll learn to ride it one of these days, and he kind of likes it anyway.

15. **He can't stand chippies.**

It's the perpetual smell of the burned grease. Fried foods are an iffy thing for him anyway; he only likes them in very small doses and only if they're impeccably crisp and not at all soggy, but the kind of cheap chippie the Aurors tend to favor on assignment makes him want to gag. The others find it hysterical that the actual Lord on the team will happily tuck into a sodden mass of wet chips while the big, coarse-handed Birmingham lad hunts around for somewhere serving something griddled, but he doesn't care enough to give in. When there just isn't another option, he'd swear he can feel that grotesque slick on the top of his mouth and catch a faint whiff of singed lard for days, no matter how often he brushes his teeth.

16. **He is allergic to dogs.**

Not to the point where he can't partner with Demmy, despite her private kennel, but enough that he can't go to her house without loading up on potions beforehand unless he wants to literally sneeze himself bloody. The children very, very, very badly want a puppy, though, and he and Meg have started looking into a few of the hypo-allergenic breeds, albeit not with all that much urgency. Now that the older kids are hitting things that end with teen, levels of personal responsibility so necessary to a successful argument on the subject have gone from the steady climb of their earlier childhood to something that more resembles the EKG readout of a shapeshifter having a grand mal seizure. Of course, as he tries to remind himself, if they don't start a suicidal student rebellion against a corrupt regime, they're really doing ok…even if they're still wrecking their odds of getting a puppy.

17. **He loves cheesy romances.**

His favorite stories have always been love stories. Not just any love stories, though…the shamelessly sappy, mushy ones where the peril is barely worth mentioning and there is a lot of lingering emphasis on the happily ever after. He pretends Meg must have accidentally put that book in his bag or that he's checking out something his daughter has been talking about to make sure it's appropriate, but he knows that most of his coworkers see right through it and have since they were children together. Even before he had seen some of the darker parts of the world, though, Zach has always liked his fantasies to be just that…happy places where you can go to not worry about the shit that can chase you down so mercilessly in reality. And what better stories for that than the ones that end in love and family?

18. **He did not get the DA tattoo until 2003. **

After what they all just call "the incident in Ireland", he was in St. Mungos, freshly out of surgery for the bullet he'd taken to the shoulder and waiting for news on Finnigan. It had been Jimmy who had approached him, and he had been instantly wary, knowing all too well that he had been one of Colin's most passionate admirers and the loudest voice of what he sometimes suspected they were all thinking. Jimmy had never hesitated to call Zach a turncoat and a fucking coward (when he was feeling nice about it and not hexed up on anything) and so he was literally speechless when the youth put a hand on his good shoulder and offered a shop not too far away that he knew well and offered to pay for the date and monogram the rest of them already wore. It was an iffy sort of place to say the least, but he'd been dazed enough to agree, and somehow about an hour later, he'd wound up with yet another fresh bandage on his shoulder, high off his ass for the first and only time in his life on what he had been assured was "epic Ganj" and watching a boy with half a face getting his back covered in roses while his tears soaked Zach's hands.

19. **He has wound up with a Muggle stepfather-in-law. **

After her second round with the Order of the Phoenix cost her almost everything she had left – including her husband and very nearly her daughter – Megan's mother, Hestia, adopted her middle name of Catherine and swore off the wizarding world. Three years beyond the war saw her almost unrecognizable, the plump and determinedly wandless shift manager of a small bakery in Airborough, married to a car insurance adjuster named Gary who had a bit of a bald patch and a tendency to accidentally lock himself in his garage. For someone like Zach or even her own daughter, both of whom were raised as Purebloods entirely within wizarding society, it's as odd as if she had gone off and joined some form of garlic-worshiping nudist compound, but they do their best to juggle time spent with grandmum with preserving the Statute, and Zach even acquiesced to carrying a mobile…which did, admittedly, prove useful once or twice.

20. **He has a second tattoo.**

It is magical, on the back of his right hand, four lines of poetry charmed so that only he can read it. He wavers, depending on the day, whether he did the right thing. He knows it was for the right reasons. He doesn't know whether it would have made a difference had he stayed, whether he did a better thing with the reinforcements and maybe even drawing the Carrow's attention from searching harder for the RoR beforehand. He knows, and some days he doesn't even entirely call himself a traitor. Some days, he even forgives himself. But every day, every night, in the space between any given errant blink, it can come back; the memory of that morning. Of dawn unveiling fresh horrors with every new shaft of light, every corner turned, every stone lifted. Of broken bodies, glass, stone, hearts. Ash and dust and smoke in the air like fog, like poison gas. The screaming and the sobbing and the laughing and the silent. Morag, auburn hair strewn with eggshell skull. Wayne, curled as if sleeping around Owen whom he hadn't quite saved. Sally-Anne blinded. Derek's throat torn to bone. Justin's face, as pale as if he too were dead over a body missing three fingers and sodden in blood, too strong to be so still. His whisper so hollow, his diction too perfect for a morning with everything wrong:

_My friend, you would not tell with such high zest,  
To children ardent for some desperate glory,  
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est,  
Pro patria mori._


End file.
